“One could conclude, with Filip Reyntjens, that ‘”civil society'” is controlled by the regime’. However, this is too sweeping; there remain occasional spaces – created by electoral politics, progressive development initiatives, and the dependence of the government on other actors – that need to be identified and exploited by donors and civil society. As noted earlier, the problem is that the spaces are ad hoc and personalized, rather than based on institutional relationships between society and the state in which individuals and groups can demand access to rights as citizens.”